I had lunch at Avonlea Antique Mall-Hipstomatic fun

Its MILES long, has endless booths and a cafe to keep your

energy up. I had lunch with Tom and Carl 

chowing down on the chicken berry salad. Sooooo de-lish.

 The boys left so I started wandering about. Remember patterns?

I wish I had kept mine, however, in reviewing sizes on these

babies mine wouldn't fit anymore. And in reviewing these

sizes and what's passing for sizes now-a-days 

you are having tricks played on you.

 And doesn't this cabinet make you swoon. It would

look great in our entry. Tom is not buying it. Literally.

 So I had to make a pitstop. This is their version of a powder room.

It took me days to get out of it.

 Just washing your hands was an experience. There are 4 stalls and I used

each and every one. And shopped. Quite the multi-tasker. LOL!

 Since Tommy-boy wasn't buying the cabinet, I found this stove.

oooooooooo  However, he pointed out we have one already.

He's a true romantic :|

And then just when I was thinking where's Connie when you need her,

BAM! found some bottlecaps and receipts. The receipts are from Pennsyvania

railroad shipping to the Edison Electric Light company.

Be Still My Beating Heart. 

Connie, my online blogger pal, is the finder & keeper of all things vintage that rock her pages.

And being the copy cat that I am - bought the bottlecaps.

You need to check her out at Crafty Goodies and bookmark her.

Freeze Frame

I have no idea how I missed this photo in the first place. 

It's been languishing around since last year and I happened to stumble upon it my mistake. 

And it made me laugh and look at it several times. 

The sign of a great photo right? 

Well 2 of them are the grandboys and they're a freakin' hoot. As you can tell by their poses. 

And then the dog. Seriously? Posing. That's a cause for a grin in and of itself. 

8x8 Size and I believe the background is JBS (I could be wrong) and assorted Bella Blvd and one I can't remember. 

But I wanted to use happy colors.

 I had a great time with this page and I used my brush art font from Sissix with negative and postive space because I was too lazy to go back and cut them again, 

but I'm not clear about the whole thin die things.

 I heard odd things when I ran it through the big shot. SIGH.........

We have left the premises as the mold slayers are doing their thing.
And that stuff smells nasty.
Hoping they're done by the end of the week and we can
put the rest of the rooms together - but the
kitchen will be together.
And oddly we found the problems in the bathroom but the
kitchen took the brunt of it.

We will be rocking with Clapton later this evening.
Laaayyyyy-lllllaaaaaaa

The ad challenge at SNC

involved kissing. Although I had a lot of photos where kissing was involved, I decided to use this paper I had laying about for decades its seems. Its from scrapbour - the love letter collection. I have no idea how I acquired it, nor why I kept it so long. The photo is a picture of my mom and dad right out of high school, so very young, and on the back of the photo - my mom came through again, by marking December 31, 1952 and January 1, 1953 in such tiny writing I missed it the first time around.

 She's a hoot.

 Like maybe they didn't call it New Year's Eve back in her day. I love that they celebrated it so comfortably. And this was before they probably even thought about getting married. 

Now if you examine the photo closely, my Gram was all about decor back in the day and just check out the curtains, the sofa, the lamp. Her PARLOUR was indeed a fashion statement.

I love the way this photo talks.

Mote Marine experience

After Jungle Gardens we decided to check out Mote Marine.
Its basically an R&D and sea creature rescue
It has expanded a lot since we were last there and there was lots
to see and do.

 The sea lions of course are like the jesters of the sea

and it was amusing to watch the ones in this pool.

Their trainers kept going back and forth and 

the seals would follow them around as best they could.

It was a hoot to watch.

 This one is actually genius. They have a sandy bottom and flowing water.

You pay $5 for a pail for of sand and sharks teeth.

And then you get a sieve and pan for the sharks teeth.

The kidlets have no idea they've been set up and everyone "finds"

a bunch of them. This amused Owen for about 20 minutes.

Just in time for the seal show.

 Of course there are picturesque signs that you can poke your

head or the heads of your offspring's offspring through.

Very fun when you can get them to stand still for 

a second or two.

 The turtles are huge and live a long life when they aren't

in turtle soup. It was neat that the big tanks 

had windows kid high and thus keeping their hands

from getting bit.

 Jellyfish remind me of lava lamps. You can get buzzed 

watching this for days. And the lighting rocked.

Owen proudly showing his cache of "found" sharks teeth.

And he gets to keep the bucket.

Genius.

Ephemera-document

I've had this original memorandum laying around for years.

I had 2 maybe 3 of them and they are 

from Lehigh Valley PA where I'm from originallly.

And in the wayback box were these pictures of 'the last

steam engine'. Mom had written that on the back as well as a date

June 4, 1960 but not the where. I know there was a 

roundhouse in Easton, PA somewhere but

doing research on the internet evidently it wasn't as big a deal

as we thought it was. 

I'm thinking they retired these babies with some pomp and

circumstance.

This page turned out goofy but I really didn't want to cover up

all the cool things on the memo and wasn't sure how to accomplish that.

On the positive side, I did another page with 3 original photos on it.

SO A MADDAWG MADCAP OVER AT SNC-

USE EPHEMERA ON YOUR PAGE.

A moment with you....

Continuing with the whole misting thing I wanted to change the color

of the die cut circles see the second layout here where I misted

and used negative space. So you can see the die cut circles on this page.

I also used my new Studio Calico stamps for the title.

There are also misted butterfly negatives that you can't see.

My bad. 

Seriously do you really ever know where exactly

you're going to create on a page.

Of course I swapped out the photo because the ones I had in mind

lacked one I knew I had somewhere and finally found.

But not in time for this page.

So I picked another original photo from the wayback box

AND Sha-zam.

There's alot going on in this photo. 

Like at Howard's feet is an adorable kitten.

And in the bushes is a man looking toward the house.

I can't identify him. Sadly.

But its precious all the same.

 So the pictures below were meant for the page above.

Don't you love how it all works out.

I'm so gifted that way!

I put these pictures out on FB because I don't know the location

and sadly the last remaining relative in the picture didn't know either.

And I had the baby wrong.

Sigh.

I used stash on this - that paper is EK success and soooooo

old and flimsy that I backed it with cardstock.

And I love the look. Very old school.

Some Cosmo Cricket thrown in.

And yes that's me with the goofy haircut at 12. 

I was just allowed to start growing it out.

And yes, that was how it was done (dare I say it)

in the old days. 

*laughing hysterically*

Now I know why my Gram wanted to clock me when

I asked her about the olden days.

Yes, April we do need to set heritage parameters.

Raise your hand if you have a lot of boxes

Loaded with photos sitting about. 

Every now and then when I'm searching for that photo(s) that will spark my mojo, 

I all of a sudden happen upon photos I never ever

  noticed the first few million times plowing through. 

It always boggles my mind when that happens.

Because it is now their time to be scrapped.

And those three are IT.

 I don't ever remember seeing them and I don't believe

they were ever stored all together. So I was pleasantly surprised

when I happened upon them. 

The starkness of the photos indicate that the construction of the 

home was just completed and we moved in.

And my brother and I were very excited.

I wrote about this home in other layouts so I didn't go into too much detail here

due to lack of space because I wanted to use this diecut shape.

And I'm baffled I can't identify the man sitting next to pappap.

I punched out the flowers and decided to add gold heirloom glimmermist.

So instead of wasting all that yummy-ness I sprayed them on white cardstock

which came the base paper for the layout below.

I know!!! It's the little things.

This little piece of paper is what's left of the paper behind the photos

that you can't see except for a little bit below the middle photo

and now I wonder why I bothered. LOL.

I did write the address and our phone number down

including the old area code because I was shocked I remembered that

when I couldn't tell you what I had for dinner yesterday.

Funny how the mind works.

Doesn't the negative space and mist rock. I love it and it works

perfect on another photo I happened across of Nick

and Shane at the church Easter egg hunt.

They were so young. Shane was 3 and Nick 12.

I used happy scraps and some jillybean soup diecuts that I reversed

and glimmermisted with turqoise because the other side is pink.

Not that my manly kidlets couldn't handle the pink, the blue worked better.

I didn't add more flowers instead I misted some punched

butterflies on the same kraft paper I misted those shapes and it turned out ok..

That one may be used cut as background or used for punches.

I'm not sure. I have to look at it in the light of day.